Little Girls Lost (Carson Ryder, Book 6)

by J. A. Kerley

  “I’ll be right back to get your order, hon.”

  Truman felt a thrill as he looked past the menu at the restaurant. According to the news, it was owned by some guy supposedly watching Jacy Charlane when she was taken. The girl’s mother was out of town visiting relatives, went the reports. Now that Truman had beaten the cops, he felt safe to do as he pleased, and it pleased him to eat at The Gumbo King. He wondered if the man was in the kitchen. He also wondered why the front window had been replaced with a sheet of plywood.

  The waitress returned. “Now then, hon, what’ll you have?”

  He ordered crab gumbo, salad, and sweet tea, angling his chair for a better look at the kitchen area. The waitress disappeared through the swinging doors but he saw no one else but customers, a third of the tables taken by diners, a mix of ages, races and genders. Truman was disappointed; he’d seen the mothers and one father of the other girls on television, but he’d never personally seen anyone affected by his actions. He thought it would be exciting, and had told Rose to meet him at the restaurant. Truman checked his watch; the idiot was always late.

  His salad appeared before him: romaine, endive, and bibb lettuces studded with gleaming tomatoes, chunks of feta cheese, and pepperoncini. He picked the peppers up by their stems and, when no one was looking, tossed them beneath the table. He flooded the salad with Italian dressing, emptied two packets of sugar over it, and began eating.

  As he chewed, he considered how well his business was going. The secret was specialization. Every possible taste lurked in the cyberwilderness where he once traded in playground photos, but it was the specialists who pulled the top dollars. Truman decided to specialize in young, exceptionally lovely black girls, offered not as photos, but as ownable merchandise. His list of potential buyers was small, those who made enquiries even smaller, the buyers’ list smaller still.

  But the money was so big.

  He was also planning on repeat business. Hadn’t it happened already—the buyer for the Charlane girl the same man who’d purchased Darla Dumont, the test girl, last year? A very wary man, demanding double encryption, sending Tru the key, taking days to nail down the details of the purchase. Last year, before wiring the down payment, he’d demanded proof the operation wasn’t a scam, and Tru had sent copies of news stories about the abduction along with photos of the bound and waiting product.

  The transfer had taken place on the Mobile River, a dark pier above the State Docks, and had worked flawlessly.

  The waitress reappeared at Truman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, hon, we don’t have crab today, it’s shrimp gumbo. We didn’t make as much gumbo as usual and—”

  Truman picked up the single-sheet menu and poked at it with his fork. “It says right here, ‘crab gumbo’.”

  “Like I said, I didn’t get a chance to—”

  Truman leaned back and rolled his eyes. “What kind of place is this? Promise one thing then not deliver.”

  “I’m sorry. Today we just have shrimp, chicken and andouille, shrimp and andouille, and okra. We have seafood etouffeé; it has fresh crab in it.”

  “Yeah, gimme that.”

  She chugged away. Truman looked up to see Rose pushing through the door in split-sided denim shorts and a sleeveless white sweatshirt. A slender wreath of gold chains encircled his massive pink neck. Several customers watched Rose discreetly, one woman at a corner table nudging her female companion and pointing with her eyes as Rose crossed the room. Truman studied the women; they were pretty, with shining hair and suntanned legs crossed beneath the table. Truman detested the looks Rose’s muscles generated, but felt visceral gratification at being seen with him.

  If you girlies knew what I know …

  He knew that Rose—who drew steady and unashamed stares from women and flickering, unsettled glances from men—was terrified by any woman past adolescence. Tru had set Rose up with women in the past only to watch the slab-bodied behemoth blush and stutter, sweating like there was a lawn sprinkler beneath his clothes.

  Rose bent his knees and lowered to the chair as if readying for a clean-and-jerk. “Isn’t this the place where—”

  “Yes.”

  Rose looked around and laughed. “Too cool.”

  The nearest other patrons were two tables away. Truman leaned toward Rose as he sat. “How’s our last piece of product?”

  Rose said, “I fed her and she went to sleep.”

  “The buyer posted a message. He wants us to get her measurements. Like how tall she is and how long her legs are and things. A shitload of measurements. He wants them by this afternoon.”

  “What the hell for, Tru?”

  “I didn’t ask, Rose. A man pays quarter-million bucks for a product, I’ll measure anything he wants. That’s the way a service business works.” Truman speared a forkful of salad. “Hey, you been watching the kid on your new TV and milking the mongoose?”

  Rose colored and looked away. “No. Fuck you.”

  Truman smiled slyly. “I thought that’s why you spent all that money on the camera hookup to the shelter.”

  Rose started to stand. “Fuck you again. You want to eat alone?”

  “Sit down. Get a sense of humor, Rose. Jeez.”

  The waitress spun by, moving fast. “I’ll be with you in a minute, hon,” she said, unable to hide the microsecond double take at Rose.

  “Don’t order the crab gumbo; the menu’s a lie,” Truman said, making sure it was loud enough for the waitress to hear as she bounced her fat tits past the table.

  “When’s … little princess get picked up?” Rose asked over the top of the menu.

  “Three days. Or four. I get the feeling that the buyer’s on some kind of schedule. Like maybe a business trip or something. It was like this last year, remember? The waiting, then all of a sudden the phone call and—”

  Truman paused and cocked his head.

  “What?” Rose asked.

  Truman spun toward the kitchen and looked at the swinging doors and the server’s window. “A voice from back there. It reminded me of …”

  Sandhill burst through the doors.

  “Christ!” Truman spat, jerking his head toward the wall, trying to hide his face by pretending to scratch it.

  “What is it?” Rose asked.

  “Get up and stand between me and that guy over there—don’t look at him!—quick, like you’re showing me something in your wallet. Do it!”

  Rose positioned himself between his brother and the big man in the floppy crown, pulling from his wallet the first thing he touched, a photo of himself oiled up and posing. He bent and pretended to explain some aspect of it to Truman.

  “What the hell’s going on, Tru?”

  “Shhh!”

  From the corner of his eye Truman watched the crowned ape stride to the beverage station where the waitress was filling drink cups. The ape and waitress whispered back and forth, then the ape shot out the door.

  “He’s gone, let’s go,” Truman whispered.

  “Who was that, Tru? What’s wrong?”

  Truman stood and pulled a five from his wallet. He grabbed Marie’s hand as she passed and jammed the bill into it. “We’re out of here. I think I got food poisoning from that rotten fucking salad.”

  Truman pulled the van from the curb, his hands tight on the wheel. “That guy in the restaurant. He was one of the cops that came by today. The ones I told you about.”

  “He’s a cop?”

  “He said he was. No, wait …” Truman replayed the afternoon’s events in his head. “He didn’t say he was. And he didn’t show me ID, either. I think he faked me out.”

  “What’s going on, Tru?” Rose’s voice was up a register, like speaking through helium.

  Truman thought through the scenario. “It means the cops were bringing the big guy around hoping he’d see someone he knew, someone the cops were trying to identify.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Truman’s face slowly lit in a grin. “It means I passed i
nspection, brother, just like I said I would. How’s about giving me a high five?”

  Chapter 32

  Sandhill parked at the end of Nike’s block and strode to a restless crowd surrounding Reverend Damon Turnbull. High in the bed of a pickup with a bullhorn to his lips, he was condemning a white power structure treating black children as throwaways. The words were inflammatory and, at least as far as Sandhill had seen in his career, untrue. He muttered under his breath. A black man sucking from a brown paper bag looked over the top of his sunglasses.

  “What you say?”

  “Talking to myself,” Sandhill said, passing by.

  “White muthafucker,” the man spat at Sandhill’s back.

  Sandhill felt ugliness in the hot air, a smog of hatred and anger. He saw Ryder on the high stoop outside the entrance to Nike’s apartment building. Beside him was Roland Zemain, his uniform traded for paint-stained sweat pants and a tee shirt proclaiming, ROLL TIDE. Zemain had brought two fellow street cops, black guys taut with energy beneath street clothes. They were doing a decent job of looking unobtrusive, homies hanging on the stoop, listening to Turnbull.

  Sandhill checked the far end of the block. He knew there’d be cruisers positioned around the corner, waiting for trouble. He hoped they stayed out of sight; gasoline on coals if they showed up. A potential nightmare.

  Ryder glanced at Nike. She was sitting on the couch, her eyes rimmed with red, fingertips shaking. He looked away, thinking his problems were petty in comparison.

  She said, “Thanks for coming, Detective Ryder; I can’t take this right now.”

  “We’ll go to Sandhill’s place. He says Marie’ll be finished at seven. You ready?”

  Ryder gave Nike his hand as she stood. She felt weightless, Ryder thought, a woman stripped of everything but breath. She walked to the window and looked down at the crowd.

  “Look at the anger and betrayal in their eyes, Detective Ryder, and how skilled Turnbull is at feeding that anger.”

  “Non sequiturs glued together with misconceptions,” Ryder said. He watched the minister stop chanting to pluck a cellphone from the jacket of his black suit. Turnbull listened without speaking, concern clouding his face. He dropped the phone in his pocket and begin climbing from the bed of the pickup.

  Ryder turned to Nike. “We’ll just walk to the car. It’ll be a noisy walk, but don’t pay anyone any mind.”

  “Is Conner coming?”

  “He’s checking if anyone in the crowd looks suspicious. Sometimes … the people who do these things, they like to …”

  “To watch. To feed off of pain. I know.” Nike Charlane stood and took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

  When they opened the door to the street, the crowd went quiet. “Trouble,” Ryder said.

  “What?” Zemain asked from behind.

  “Turnbull’s gone.”

  A Channel 5 news van now stood in place of Turnbull’s truck. A videographer stood on the roof of the van, his camera a glass eye studying Ryder. A half-dozen women wearing nametags proclaiming New Morning A.M.E. Church stepped to the top of the stoop.

  “We’re on your side, Miz Charlane,” said an elderly woman in a floral bonnet. “We want to make the police go find your Jacy.”

  Nike spoke quietly. “Thank you for your concern. But please, just go home.”

  The crowd drew tighter, listening. A woman from the church handed Nike a candle. “For your baby. We’re praying for your little girl.” The woman spun to Ryder. “Why don’t you find this poor woman’s baby, Mr Policeman? Why you not doing anything but axin’ peoples the same questions over and over?”

  Ryder kept his voice low. “The chief explained all this, ma’am. He’s been on TV, radio. We’re doing our best. Now please stand aside.”

  “Your best just ain’t muthafuckin’ good enough, is it now?” a man yelled from below on the pavement. He seemed drunk, eyes wet, words slushy at the edges. He waved a paper-bagged bottle as punctuation. The churchwoman’s eyebrows lifted slightly, as if the man had spoken her true words.

  Ryder said, “Clear a path. We’re coming through.”

  The man waved a fist. “I said your best ain’t good enough. What you say to that?”

  Ryder ignored him. Another man, his arms bulging like a dockworker’s, pointed to Nike Charlane and yelled, “Where you taking her?”

  Nike herself wheeled to face the man, her eyes hard. “He’s taking me to a friend’s house. Leave us alone.”

  “You trusting the police? You crazy, girl.”

  Nike threw the candle and it bounced off the man’s chest. “Go away, dammit!” The man’s eyes filled with embarrassment and he retreated into a crowd growing thicker and tighter with each passing second.

  “Excuse me, excuse me, ladies and gennulmens, let me through, please and thank you, sirs …”

  A black man in his sixties with pewter hair and a wiry body shouldered through the crowd. He hobbled up the steps, blocking Nike’s path. He turned to the angry faces.

  “Come on, ladies and gennulmens, please let these folks go where they need to get. Give this Policeman some respect. He just doing what he told, that’s all.”

  “Who you? Rodney King?” a voice taunted from the crowd, sparking calls of derision.

  “Sir—” Ryder said.

  “Let these folks through,” the old man called to the crowd. “This woman is sad an’ these policemens just doin’ they job.”

  “Get your ass on home, ol’ man,” a voice yelled. The crowd jeered and hooted at the man’s intercession.

  “Sir, it’s you that’s in our way,” Ryder said. “Would you please go back down the steps and—”

  The man turned to Ryder with his hands high and open. “Them folks is just angry and got nowhere to go with it, sirs. If I could get them to listen—”

  The man was cut off by a sudden scream of sirens as four cruisers whipped around the corner, tires screeching, engines roaring.

  “What the hell?” Ryder said.

  “Shit,” Zemain said. “Not now.”

  Ryder ducked his head and started down the stairs. He felt a jolt at his shoulder and lifted his head to see their gray-haired defender tumble from the side of the stoop, arms flailing. He bumped a heavy woman, sending her spinning, then slammed the pavement face-first.

  Ryder stared open-mouthed as the man pushed his head up, thick strands of blood stitching his mouth to the sidewalk. For a split second, everyone went silent. Even the sirens seemed to fade into the distance.

  “You see that?” the first voice from the silence yelled. “Cop shoved that old man off the step.”

  “An old man and they tried to kill him.”

  “Muthafucka cops.”

  “Get the bastards!”

  A paper-bagged bottle exploded against the wall of the apartment building. “Go!” Zemain yelled, pushing Ryder and Nike ahead. The crowd surged forward. Curses filled the air. Cops spilled from the cruisers, the batons like exclamation marks in their upraised hands.

  Chapter 33

  Ryder said, “I don’t remember even touching the old guy. The crowd was belly to belly and we were trying to get to the vehicle.”

  He stared at the faces around him; half the police brass, a captain from Internal affairs, Duckworth and Meyers, Zemain. Bidwell was at a conference in Montgomery. Ryder had sped Nike Charlane to the restaurant, then immediately burned rubber to headquarters for the meeting demanded by Squill. He suspected the meeting was going to be what was called a “barbecue”, and he was the one trussed for the spit.

  Squill said, “The old man hit the ground like a goddamn pumpkin. Everyone saw it. More importantly, the cameras saw it.”

  “It was an accident.”

  Acting Chief Squill dry-washed his face in his hands, nodded to the DVD. “You seen the news, Ryder?”

  The video flickered on to the screen. A guy selling campers finished his pitch and an anchorwoman appeared. The scene switched to Ryder walking from the apartment, Nik
e beside him, Zemain in the rear.

  The on-scene reporter’s voice: “… a crowd was gathering at the front of the building when members of MPD exited with the girl’s mother …”

  The camera opened to a wide shot of the crowd.

  “… crowd growing unruly when an elderly man attempted to defuse the situation …”

  All eyes went to the video: The black guy hobbling up the stoop and facing the crowd to make his plea, then turning to Ryder, hands up, submissive.

  “Here it is,” Squill said.

  Ryder ducked and pushed forward, the guy suddenly tumbling from the steps like a dropped scarecrow, legs and arms flapping loose, slamming the woman before smacking the pavement.

  Someone in the room said, “Ouch.”

  Ryder said, “Maybe I tripped him.”

  A close-up followed, the man helped to his feet as he wiped blood from his face and staggered against the stoop to brace himself. The reporter’s voice-over: “The man who fell, asking to not be identified, was in town visiting relatives when he says he found himself in the middle of the disturbance.”

  The screen cut to a shot of the man, dazed and bloody. “… and I saw that the people was getting, you know, upset, and I thought I’d try and help, maybe put some calm in things, but …”

  “But what happened next, sir?”

  “That Policeman ran at me like a football player and next thing I know I’m laying on the ground. I don’t know why he want to hurt me, I was just trying to help.”

  “What happened to the injured guy?” Myers asked.

  Zemain said, “We sent people to check on him, but he’d gone. Told people he wanted to get back to Huntsville where it was safe.”

  “He just disappeared?” someone asked.

  “Until we hear from his lawyer,” Squill said. He turned to Ryder. “Not bad, Ryder. You start out escorting a woman from her apartment and end up inciting a riot. You didn’t finish what you started last week, had to go get it right?”

  Zemain said, “We were cool until the cars rolled. The crowd blew up and we had to push our way out. That’s when the old guy went over.” He looked at the faces around the table. “And for the record, I think the guy tripped on his own shoelaces.”